Intrada Soundtrack Forum

1. The Black Hole Soundtrack - NOT PREVIOUSLY AVAILABLE

According to Randy Thornton (producer of numerous Disney film score and theme park releases), Barry's THE BLACK HOLE will be included in the next batch of iTunes-only releases from Walt Disney Records coming 1/16.

He also provides some insight into the original digital recording and subsequent transfer for iTunes:

"Now before someone cries foul, I will explain the status of "The Black Hole Soundtrack". Though this was the first digitally recorded soundtrack, the digital technology of 1979 is not compatible with digital technology of today (or even 1982 when CD's were introduced). This soundtrack was recorded with 4bit resolution at 32kHz sampling, thus making a pure digital release not only impossible, but any attempt to upsample or convert them would result in a recording far worse than the analog conversion that was done at the time. The reason it has taken me so long to get this soundtrack re-released is that I wanted to make absolutely sure that there was no way I could use the original digital recordings. I also couldn't include more of John Barry's score than was originally released - as the album, as it stands, is all that was legally cleared for release. I did, however, hunt down the original analog transfer from 1979, digitally transferred and restored at 24/96 and re-created the album's original content. I know some of you more 'passionate' will still be disappointed, but there is nothing more anyone could do. Still, even at the iTunes 128kbs compression, the album has never sounded better!"

Thanks to Doug Lacey for the information.

The Black Hole by John Barry was the first "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" LP (yes, I'm that old) and as such the first soundtrack recording I ever purchased.

As it seems, it may also be the first ever iTunes only release I'll purchase.

How's that for an oddball coincidence?

I'm glad I held onto the lp. How well I remember buyng it around Christmas, 1979 one evening after work at Sound Warehouse in Dallas, Texas. Two other items I got the same evening were STAR TREK: TMP and the gatefold lp release of 1941. All three just released in the theaters.

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I’d like to own this score but in good conscience I can’t support this release. I don’t want to encourage, by supporting, this method of distribution until it at least equals in quality the current method of distribution, CDs.

The bulk of the work has been done. Finding and restoring the elements, remastering and clearing legal hurdles. Someone should take the next step and release this on CD.

This release also excludes many customers because it is only available in certain countries so if you live in a country that isn’t served by iTunes US or Canada you are out of luck.

This music needs to be available to everyone who wants to buy it and it needs to be available lossless.

(Despite what people have said about the “qualityâ€

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No matter where you go, there you are....Wait a minute! That's how it always works out.

128 is awful quality for such refined music as John Barry's music. The man who restored it speaks about digital elements and wants the music to be taken from the best source possible ? Why that, if it's for a poor mp3 128k release on Itunes. I can't support this release myself, so I don't care. I hope this genre of release won't become usual !
Long life to the CD !

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Barry's The Black Hole is one of the all-time classic science fiction scores (can't quite say the same for the film, sadly) and I've had the lp for many years. I downloaded the score from iTunes and have been listening to it in the car as I drive to work. It's wonderful stuff. I've also listened to it at home and in my opinion much of the concern about the sampling rate and the audio quality is overblown. Yes, a cd is better and I would have greatly preferred one, but I think you would need a very high-end home system indeed to hear a difference on this recording. One can point to other, poorly encoded releases, I'm sure, but this one sounds just fine.

With all the complaints about downloading, I've yet to hear anyone mention the one thing I thought would cause consternation: the album's 31-minute running time. It's a lean, mean album but - amazingly - gets in virtually everything you'd want. There's more music in the film, but most of it's variations on cues presented on the album. The cues are also (wisely, I think) presented out-of-order to reduce repetition; this score tended to clump musical ideas together, with the Main Theme getting a workout in the opening reels, the moody suspense music dominating the middle and the heroic theme underscoring the action in the last third. The lp's a great example of how to carefully select music for an entertaining listening experience.

Having said that, I congratulate Randy Thornton on making the album available. I hope that he can convince the Mouseketeers to consider an expanded cd issue, or a license to a willing label.

its all well and good itunes usa have put black hole for downloaders but what about us brits we can even have it yet thats even if itunes uk place it on there site. Music should be available for everyone to enjoy wether it be on cd tape or a lousy vinyl lp complete with pops crackles and hiss.

so if any one out there in good ole usa wants to send me it id be most gratefull

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No matter where you go, there you are....Wait a minute! That's how it always works out.

I don't quite understand some of the complaints. If what Randy Thornton says is true and the The Black Hole was recorded in 4bit resolution at 32kHz sampling, then what on earth could possibly be gained by a CD release? Except maybe a booklet? It couldn't possibly sound better than a first generation *.mp3 file, so why bother?

Or are some of you implying that what Randy is saying is untrue?

Because he did a 24 bit remaster and then encoded the wav files down to 128 Kbps and it is only available in the US and Canadian markets.

What he was talking about was the fact that he couldn't do a direct digital transfer from the original digital data files and basically remastered the score from the analog tapes used for the original album.

I understand why these things were done. Those original digital tapes probably would have required special equipment to read it and would have to b either upsampled or down sampled to work with today's technology so he used the analog masters for the album which is all that was legally cleared anyway.

I think the problem is that people confuse digital sampling rates (bit depth) with compression.

24 bit remaster means that 24 bits of data are sampled with maximum of 16,777,216 to get a very precise digital model of sound. In fact, at 24-bit samples one minute of uncompressed audio takes about 10megs of disk space. When it is compressed the same minute takes up roughly 1 meg of disk space. Compression is performed by using an encoder based on a psychoacoustic analysis of human hearing. Basically engineers analyzed what sounds (frequency ranges) are actually perceived by humans. Frequencies that we don’t hear are removed from the file and then the empty space is compressed not unlike how a trash compactor works. The more aggressive the encoder is in determining this the smaller the file and the lower the audio quality. Thus 64 kbps is pretty aggressive and the loss of audio quality is apparent to just about anybody. As the Kbps go up so does the quality and the size of the file.

ACC (Advanced Audio Coding) is basically the same thing except that it uses advances in psychoacoustic analysis to provide better sound with a higher level of compression. Thus an ACC encoded file at 128Kbps is the rough equvilent of 192Kbps using an Mp3 encoder like Lame or Fraunhofer.

But the fact remains that ACC is still a lossy format. During the compression process, data is discarded and cannot be retrieved. Take a look at this spectral frequency display. This first is the uncompressed audio for the True Grit recording from Tadlow music:



This is an ACC compressed audio file of the exact same music:



You can see that at about 18000 hz the frequencies are truncated. This represents lost data or sound.

The worst part is that iTunes supports lossless formats like FLAC or even uncompressed audio that would allow us to enjoy the same audio quality as we do with CDs.

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No matter where you go, there you are....Wait a minute! That's how it always works out.

Thanks for taking the time to write such an excellent reply. That The Black Hole should only be available in the USA/Canada is of course a major drawback, but one that I expect to be temporary.

However, while it is as you say that a 24 bit remaster means that 24 bits of data are sampled, the actual recording was only 4bits. To directly upsample a 4bit recording to 24bits is somewhat akin to stretching an 8x8 pixel picture to poster size. It can be done, but it'll look like it was assembled out of giant Lego bricks.

I'm with you all the way on wanting to get the best sounding releases, but in this case I'm not so sure that the 24/96 master made from the analog conversion could possibly sound that much better than a regular compressed *.mp3 file. Because it is not just a question of how many bits of data, but what do these bits of data contain?

The fact remains that the original recording resolution was 4 bits (neglecting the odd sampling rate because it is of lesser importance here).

My point it that the analog transfer cannot sound better than the original 4bit recording. I mean, look: a 24/96 upmastering of a 4bit/32 recording obviously contains a lot of redundant data, because that's what upsampling is all about: just using the available data to fill in the missing data. Now compression is -- among other things - about filtering out redundant data. So if you compress a 24/96 upmastering of a 4bit/32 recording down to *.AAC, should this recording not still contain all the data of the 4bit/32 recording? Why should that be different from the compression of a 24/96 master that was created from an analog source based on such a recording? Or are you saying that -- no matter how iTunes will compress the files -- the compression technology will remove plenty of vital data instead of just redundant data? Isn't that rather improbable given the enormous amount of upsampling?

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"He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once." - Robert Browning

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